Sergeant Jonathan Johnson and Reserve Officer Trevor Ingold
Reserves in Paris for the 2024 Olympics
Calling this a unique assignment does not even begin to describe it. I know the planning and execution of this mission will be thoroughly covered elsewhere in this edition of The Rotator, so I will use my limited space to discuss a few reflections I have from this trip. I have traveled internationally a few times, but always for vacation and never for work. On prior travels, at best I might have had a brief conversation with local cops in their station’s front lobby while I negotiated a patch trade. This trip was entirely different. We were there to work alongside the French police, learning the ins and outs of how they approach police work from SOW to EOW. This was such a unique privilege and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
For the three weeks we walked a foot beat through the streets of Paris, we seldom made it more than 10 paces without being stopped and asked to take a photo, sometimes by citizens but more often by other cops. We were just one of a few dozen foreign agencies brought in by the French government to work the Olympics. While walking the beat, we would often cross paths with other roving groups of international cops from places like Spain, Germany, South Korea, Ireland and even Qatar. This was like Baker to Vegas on steroids. For someone like me, who has been collecting police patches and memorabilia for my entire career, I know I will never experience anything like this again.
First, no matter where you go in the world, cops are all the same. This was proven true so many times, it became a running joke. The cops we met in France joined our profession for the same reasons we did; they experience the same hardships and disassociation with civilians, and they delight in the same camaraderie with each other that we enjoy. They have the same twisted sense of humor as we do, and many of their jokes do not require a translator. They have the same gripes, play the same pranks on each other and approach their profession with the same passion as the rest of us. Cops really are all the same.
One shocking revelation is that French police are deeply pro-America. It was not an uncommon occurrence to see off-duty French police officers wearing grunt-style T-shirts with a Gadsden flag logo or displaying some other distinctly American symbolisms. In the men’s locker room, the walls and lockers had many American flags and even pro-Trump stickers. None of us were expecting that. In Paris’ 13th District, we worked with a French officer who barely spoke English and had never been outside of Europe — and yet his arms were covered with American tattoos featuring our flag’s stars and bars, our national monuments and the words “we the people.” To say the French police are heavily influenced by our culture would be a colossal understatement. Many of them told us they grew up aspiring to become police officers after watching movies like Lethal Weapon or Die Hard. LAPD tends to be the most commonly depicted agency in these movies, and therefore we seemed to be the visiting foreign agency the French were most excited to see during the Olympics. And when it came to trading patches, anything that said LAPD on it was like gold over there.
In France, I was fortunate enough to connect with some truly remarkable people. When I was assigned to the 8th District in Paris, we had the privilege of working for Aurelien “Jack” Puchal, the French equivalent to a lieutenant watch commander. Jack has a deep love for the LAPD and he treated us all like family. He proudly showed us a book about LAPD that he got in the ’90s when he was visiting L.A. On our last day in Paris, he had each member of our team sign it for him. One day our foot beat took us to the French Nationale headquarters in Paris, located directly across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral. As we entered the main gate, I met Chief Franck Mahieu, who is an avid police memorabilia collector himself. At the time, he was very excited to meet LAPD officers, but he was late for a meeting. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet again a few days later. I came back with a vague understanding that we would be trading things slightly bigger than patches, so I brought him an LAPD mug and sweatshirt. I left his office with a stack of patches, badges, a helmet and even a full French uniform. Another day, we met a group of French Nationale police officers who love LAPD so much they have pooled their money and bought three retired American police cars, shipped them to France and painstakingly recreated them into LAPD shops. This was clearly a labor of love, and they were incredibly detailed, even down to the correct noise the sirens make. Their recreated cars were so detailed and accurate, several LAPD officers back home saw these shops in our pictures and asked me how I managed to get our cars shipped to France. These guys formed a group called “Paris Interceptor” and they use these recreated LAPD shops and cosplay uniforms to raise money for various charitable functions very similar to what the Reserve Corps does for Sunshine Kids. Due to their background as officers and their profound respect for LAPD, they are always mindful of how they behave when they unofficially represent our department. What a unique honor it was to travel halfway around the globe and meet local cops who love and respect our department so much they spend their spare time dressing up like us.
I will be going back to Paris in the spring on my next vacation, and I already have plans to meet up with many of these new friends I made. And as of this writing, we have already had three of our French police partners visit us in L.A. during their vacations, staying in our guest bedrooms while we show them around our city. This assignment has already proven to have been the impetus for unlikely yet deeply meaningful friendships.
One of my favorite things was the amount of quality time I got to spend with the reserves on the team whom I had not previously known. A smaller portion of the team were old friends of mine from my days as the reserve coordinator at Hollywood. The rest of the team were people I had only ever spoken to in passing, or in some cases had never met at all. As a career patrol guy who more or less fell into an administrative assignment by accident, my one complaint with my current job is how removed I am from field work and regular cops. For three wonderful weeks I got to work with my guys like I used to when I was an officer. I got to walk a foot beat with them as partners and get to know them on a personal level. Now that it has been a few weeks, when I think back to my fondest memories of the trip, most of them are when the whole team got together after shifts to break bread, trade stories and bust chops.
Of course, I must thank Chief of Police Dominic Choi for letting any of this happen. The easiest thing would have been to deny approval for this trip and avoid even the slightest risk of an international incident if anything went wrong. There were so many unknowns during the planning of this event, it could have easily been canceled at any point. Instead, Chief Choi saw the potential for success and put his trust in the Reserve Corps to get the job done. The amount of confidence he had in the reserves to represent the Department on such a huge global stage proves yet again that reserve officers are every bit as capable as full-time officers.
Even the Chief would agree the person who should be thanked more than anyone is Bernard Khalili, who, with his unique background and decades-long connections in France, is truly the biggest reason any of this was even possible. Bernard and his career-long partner Trevor Ingold worked tirelessly to plan and coordinate this mission. It is only through their efforts and attention to detail that it was such an overwhelming success. And last, I need to thank the entire 30-man team of reserves. They all worked tirelessly and ensured the Department and the Reserve Corps were always being represented in the best possible way. I have never been prouder of the Reserve Corps than I was at the end of this trip. It was the ultimate privilege of my career to be able to represent the Department in this way and to lead this wonderful group of officers on the assignment of a lifetime.